Background Information:
English Romanticism, as a historical phase of literature, is generally said to have begun in 1798 with the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads and to have ended in 1832 with Sir Walter Scott’s death.
It was in effect a revolt of the English imagination against the neoclassical reason which prevailed from the days of Pope to those of Johnson.
In the history of literature, Romanticism is generally regarded as the thought that designates a literary and philosophical theory which tends to see the individual as the very center of all life and all experience.
The Romantic period is an age of poetry. Blake, Burns, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats are the major Romantic poets. They started a rebellion against the neoclassical literature, which was later regarded as the poetic revolution.
Wordsworth and Coleridge were the major representatives of this movement. They explored new theories and innovated new techniques in poetry writing.
The preface to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads acts as a manifesto for the new school. Wordsworth, Coleridge and Robert Southey have often been mentioned as the ―Lake Poets‖.
The two major novelists of the Romantic period are Jane Austen and Walter Scott.
Gothic novel, a type of romantic fiction that predominated in the late 18th century, was one phase of the Romantic Movement.
Its principal elements are violence, horror, and the supernatural. Representative works are a Gothic Story by Clara Reeve, and Frankenstein《弗兰肯斯坦》by Mary Shelley（玛丽·雪莱）.
William Blake 威廉·布莱克（1757~1872）
a representative Romantic poet, engraver, painter and mystic
As a poet, he is famous for his mysticism and complex symbolism.
His visionary world is extremely important to his work. He is also fond of using allusions to the Bible.
Blake’s representative works: Poetical Sketches《素描诗集》 Songs of Experience《经验之歌》 Songs of Innocence《天真之歌》
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell《天堂与地狱的联姻》
His most popular poems are ―The Chimney Sweeper‖ and ―The Tyger.‖
Robert Burns (1759~1796) the national poet of Scotland
a poet of the peasants, a poet of the people best in his rural themes
chiefly remembered for his songs written in the Scottish dialect
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Style:
happy simplicity, humor, directness and optimism
Analysis of ―A Red Red Rose‖:
The first and third lines of each stanza are in iambic tetrameter, Iambic tetrameter is an eight-syllable line with alternating pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables. Each pair makes up a foot so that each tetrameter line has four feet, as in line 1 of the first stanza: ..........1......................2.................3.................4...... O MY | Luve's LIKE | a RED, | red ROSE
the second and fourth lines are in iambic trimeter.
Iambic trimeter is a six syllable line with alternating pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables. Each pair makes up a foot so that each trimeter line has three feet, as in line 2 of the first stanza: .........1..........................2....................3 That's NEW.| ly SPRUNG.| in JUNE Theme of ―A Red Red Rose‖:
The speaker loves the young lady beyond measure. The only way he can express his love for her is through vivid similes and hyperbolic comparisons.
The poem expresses love, but it does not try to stir up deep feelings of passion—instead, it reminds readers of obstacles of love, making the speaker's feelings sound more personal.
William Wordsworth 威廉·华兹华斯(1770~1850)
the leading figure of the English romantic poetry, the focal poetic voice of the period
Regarded as a ―worshipper of nature,‖ he was the closest to nature among the ―Lake Poets.‖
Wordsworth’s theory of poetry is calling for simple themes drawn from humble life expressed in the language of ordinary people.
His representative poems like ―I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud‖, ―To a Skylark‖ and ―To the Cuckoo‖ inspire his audience to see the world freshly, sympathetically and naturally. Representative works:
Tintern Abbey《丁登寺旁》 Lucy Poems《露茜组诗》
Lyrical Ballads《抒情歌谣集》 My Heart Leaps Up《我心荡漾》 The Prelude《序曲》
Analysis of “I Wandered Lonely as A Cloud‖:
In stanza 1, the poet just mentions that the daffodils ―dancing in the breeze.‖
In stanza 2, the dance becomes more concrete and vivid: “Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.” Here the word is used as a noun.
In the 3rd stanza the poet gradually shifts his attention from the outer world to the inner world. In the final stanza, the poet says his heart “dances with the daffodils.” This suggests the harmony of the outer and inner worlds, revealing the power of imagination.
The imagination is therefore “A motion and a spirit, that impels / All thinking things, all objects of all thought, / And rolls through all things.”
Although the “outer eye” brings “sensations sweet,” but the “inward eye” can “see into
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the life of things” and thus offers greater spiritual pleasures.
When it comes to the first line of the 3rd stanza, it is the waves that dance, but the poet immediately adds that the daffodils “outdid the sparkling waves.” Anyway the word “dance” connects the waves and the daffodils, and it also connect the first two stanzas with the third.
I wandered lonely as a cloud: It revisits the familiar subjects of nature and memory, this time with a particularly simple, musical eloquence.
Plot: the poet's wandering and his discovery of a field of daffodils by a lake, the memory of which pleases him and comforts him when he is lonely, bored, or restless.
Form: The four six-line stanzas of this poem follow (a quatrain + a couplet) rhyme scheme: ABABCC. Each line is metered in iambic tetrameter. Its Artistic Features: Simile in \"as a cloud―: the speaker likens himself to a cloud, as he and this object are both solitary and in motion.
Reverse personification: The speaker is compared to a natural object, a cloud.
Simile: the appearance of the daffodils encountered by the speaker is compared to the stars of the Milky Way.
Personification: daffodils are continually personified as human beings. This technique implies an inherent unity between man and nature.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
塞缪尔 · 泰勒 · 柯勒律治 (1772~1834)
one of the first critics to give close critical attention to language, maintaining that the true end of poetry is to give pleasure ―through the medium of beauty‖
esteemed by some of his contemporaries and generally recognized today as a lyrical poet and literary critic of the first rank Representative works:
Biographia Literaria《文学传记》 Christabel《克里斯特贝尔》 Kubla Khan《忽必烈汗》
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner《古舟子咏》 Frost at Midnight《午夜之霜》
Percy Bysshe Shelley 珀西 · 比希 · 雪莱(1792~1822)
one of the leading Romantic poets, an intense and original lyrical poet in the English language Like Blake, he has a reputation as a difficult poet: erudite, imagistically complex, full of classical and mythological allusions.
Shelley is most noted for his lyrics. Best of all the well-known lyric pieces is Shelley’s ―Ode to the West Wind‖ (1819). Representative works:
A Defence of Poetry《诗辩》 Love’s Philosophy《爱的哲学》 Ode to a Skylark《云雀颂》
Ode to the West Wind《西风颂》
Prometheus Unbound《脱缚的普罗米修斯》
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Summary of ―Ode to the West Wind‖: Structure:
The poem consists of five stanzas written in terza rima(三行体). Each canto consists of four tercets(三行押韵诗句) (ABA, BCB, CDC, DED) and a rhyming couplet (EE). The Ode is written in iambic pentameter.
Theme –different interpretations:
1. lamenting his inability to directly help those in England owing to his being in Italy 2. expressing the hope that its words will inspire and influence those who read or hear it.
3. wanting his message of reform and revolution spread, and the wind becomes the trope for spreading the word of change through the poet-prophet figure. 4. due to the loss of his son, the ensuing pain influenced Shelley. Romanticism in Ode to the West Wind A. Enthusiasm
Eg: ―Beside a pumice isle in baize’s bay quivering within the waves’ in tenser day‖. the natural world and the human social and political world are parallel. B. Subjectivism
In the poem the west wind is not merely the wind of the nature, the subject is counter-capitalism, counter-old influence, instead of regarding poetry as ―a minor to nature‖ . C. Idealism and Imagination
Eg : ―drive my dead thoughts over the incantation of this verse; like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth‖
Shelley wants to establish a new free society. D. Political Tendentiousness
The west wind is not the nature wind. It is the revolution wind, the wind against bourgeoisie, and against the power of Feudal. E. Emotion and Nature
Eg: ―if I were a dead level thou mightiest bear; if I were a swift cloud to fly with thee‖
The poet compares oneself to others by the west wind. The poet expressed the deep love and yearned for the nature through the west wind. He used the west wind to urge on oneself, expressed the free pursuit, with the hope to establish a happy world.
George Gordon Byron 乔治 · 戈登 · 拜伦(1788~1824)
As a leading Romanticist, Byron’s chief contribution is his creation of the ―Byronic hero,‖ a proud, mysteriously rebel figure of noble origin. A Byronic hero exhibits several characteristic traits, and in many ways he can be considered a rebel. The Byronic hero does not possess \"heroic virtue\" in the usual sense; instead, he has many dark qualities. With regard to his intellectual capacity, self-respect, and hypersensitivity, the Byronic hero is \"larger than life,\" and \"with the loss of his titanic passions, his pride, and his certainty of self-identity, he loses also his status as a traditional hero.
Byron has enriched European poetry with an abundance of ideas, images, artistic forms and innovations.
Representative works: Cain《该隐》
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Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage《恰尔德· 哈罗德游记》 Don Juan《唐璜》
Hours of Idleness《闲散时光》
Analysis of the poem “She Walks in Beauty”:
The rhyme scheme of the first stanza is ababab; the second stanza, cdcdcd; and the third stanza, efefef.
The meter is predominantly iambic tetrameter.
The first two lines demonstrate the pattern followed throughout the poem except for line 6, which has nine syllables:
1................2........... 3...............4 She WALKS | in BEAU | ty, LIKE | the NIGHT 1.................2................. 3...............4 Of CLOUD | less CLIMES | and STAR | ry SKIES Figures of speech:
Alliteration occurs frequently to enhance the appeal of the poem to the ear: Line 2:....cloudless climes; starry skies. Line 6:....day denies Line 8:....Had half Line 9:....Which waves Line 11...serenely sweet Line 14...So soft, so Line 18...Heart Whose
Lines 1, 2--Simile comparing the movement of the beautiful woman to the movement of the skies Line 6 ---Metonymy, in which heaven is substituted for God or for the upper atmosphere Lines 8-10 Metaphor comparing grace, a quality, to a perceivable phenomenon
Lines 11-12 Metaphor and personification comparing thoughts to people; metaphor and personification comparing the mind to a home (dwelling-place)
Lines 13-16 Metaphor and personification comparing the woman's cheek and brow to persons who tell of days in goodness spent Imagery: Light and Darkness
Theme: The theme of the poem is the woman's exceptional beauty, internal as well as external. The first stanza praises her physical beauty. The second and third stanzas praise both her physical and spiritual, or intellectual, beauty.
Literary comment: Byron presents an ethereal portrait of the young woman in the first two stanzas by contrasting white with black and light with shadow in the same way that nature presents a portrait of the firmament—and the landscape below—on a cloudless starlit evening. He tells the reader in line 3 that she combines “the best of dark and bright” (bright here serving as an noun rather than an adjective) and notes that darkness and light temper each other when they meet in her raven hair. Byron's words thus turn opposites into compeers working together to celebrate beauty.
John Keats 约翰·济慈(1795~1821)
one of the indisputably great English poets who stands with Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth
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Keats’s poetry, characterized by exact and closely knit construction, sensual descriptions, and by force of imagination, gives transcendental values to the physical beauty of the world. John Keats
Odes are generally regarded as Keats’s most important and mature works. His four great Odes: Ode on Melancholy 《忧郁颂》
Ode on a Grecian Urn 《希腊古瓮颂》 Ode to a Nightingale 《夜莺颂》 Ode to Psyche 《心灵颂》
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” is organized into ten line stanzas with a rhyme scheme that begins with a Shakespearian quatrain 四行诗(ABAB) and ends with a Miltonic sestet六行诗节 (CDECDE). This pattern is used in \"Ode on Indolence\\"Ode on Melancholy\and \"Ode to a Nightingale\is of Greek origin, meaning \"sung\". Theme of ―Ode on a Grecian Urn‖:
The poem captures aspects of Keats's idea of \"Negative Capability\who the figures are on the urn, what they are doing, or where they are going. Instead, the speaker revels in this mystery, as he does in the final couplet (mentioned below), which does not make immediate, ascertainable sense but continues to have poetic significance nonetheless. The ode ultimately deals with the complexity of art's relationship with real life.
It is now believed that the narrator was criticizing the Urn, saying that all it will ever need to know is that beauty is truth and truth beauty. This is also a sign of jealousy as the narrator admires this simplicity just as he criticizes yet admires the characters on the urn, who will never achieve climax yet are forever passionate.
Jane Austen 简·奥斯汀 (1775~1817)
In point of chronology Jane Austen belongs to the age of Walter Scott, about half a century earlier. However, her realism would place her with the realistic novelist.
Stories of love and marriage provide the major themes in all her novels, in which female characters are always playing an active part.
In her lifelong career, Austen wrote altogether six complete novels: Emma《爱玛》, Mansfield Park《曼斯菲尔德公园》, Northanger Abbey《诺桑觉寺》, Persuasion《劝说》, Pride and Prejudice《傲慢与偏见》, and Sense and Sensibility《理智与情感》. Jane Austen’s art:
1. a classical precision of structure
(which is manipulated through incidents exactly defined in realism. ) 2. a gift of phrase
humorous, ironical (light irony), illuminating, economical, through which all is related, so that each incident can be enjoyed like that in a drama .
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3. a gift of dialogue
She deals with her characters with intensity yet with detachment, without sentimentalism. Her knowledge of men’s behaviour was limited.
There are no extremely noble heroes and heroines, nor hateful villains; egoism is the dominant vice of human beings; no passion in her novels.
Sir Walter Scott 沃尔特· 斯哥特爵士 (1771~1832)
the most popular novelist of his day. He marked the transition from Romanticism to the period of Realism which followed it.
Waverley《威弗利》, The Lady of the Lake《湖畔夫人》 and Ivanhoe《艾凡赫》are among the most popular ones of his novels.
Scott is the first major historical novelist, exerting a powerful literary influence both in Britain and on the Continent throughout the 19th century.
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